Yngwie Malmsteen – Rising Force – 1984

Rising Force was the first solo album by Swedish guitar-virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen. I remember getting this back in the day on vinyl. I was blown away by the fast runs and the neoclassical style combined with heavy rock or Hardrock. Of course, you can argue that it’s not a solo album at all, that the band itself was called Rising Force and so on. And, given the fact that Yngwie’s discography hasn’t been consequent when it comes to names. I believe that some are release under Yngwie J. Malmsteen, whilst other are released under the moniker Yngwie Malmsteens’ Rising Force and so on. To me they’r all and the same.

I don’t have any backing for this argument but my opinion is Rising Force was Yngwie’s band and all the rest were hired guns, or at least it became that way over time.
Many of the songs are instrumentals and I really liked that at that time. I liked the fast guitar sweeps, even if Yngwie himself denies that he’s using sweep picking. My favorite song back then was without any doubt Far Beyond the Sun which surpassed every other song on the album in quality. Of course there are Black Star which I think is more known through out the fan based but there was something about that Far Beyond the sun licks that caught me.

Still favorite

It’s still my favorite song of the album. I don’t hold Yngwie in as high regard anymore. He’s a competent player for sure, but he seems ti be just a one trick pony to me these days. Everything sounds about the same. He’s using one scale and ha does his runs and so on, but it gets boring pretty quick.

I still like this first album though. It’s not as tremendous as I once though but it’s a good album to listen to now and again. The instrumentals are nice, neoclassical and the song where we hear Jeff Scott Soto sing are kind of spellbinding. They have something different, nice melodies that’s easy to remember. And Jeff’s voice suits the music very well. All in all I think it still hold up fairly well today.